Moss Garden
- Medium:
- Woodblock print
- Edition:
- Self-printed
- Source:
- Japanese Art Open Database
Typical Price
$500–$5,000. Common prints: $500–$1,500. Key value factors: Kitaoka's refined style has a modest but loyal collector base.
$500–$5,000. Common prints: $500–$1,500. Key value factors: Kitaoka's refined style has a modest but loyal collector base.
Japan's famous moss gardens — most famously at Saihō-ji in Kyoto — offered Kitaoka a subject that suited his interest in pure texture and color field: the close-cropped, velvety expanse of moss across stones and forest floor creates a near-abstract composition of greens, grays, and shadow. Kitaoka renders the garden's hushed, contemplative quality through the woodblock's capacity for nuanced gradation of tone, the stillness of the scene echoing the meditative calm the moss garden was designed to evoke.
![[Garden of] Taj Mahal, No. 1 (Taji Maharu no niwa, dai ichi) by Hiroshi Yoshida](https://www.artic.edu/iiif/2/230993a7-d4f0-c979-c267-127d48e1ef1c/full/843,/0/default.jpg)
Taji Maharu no niwa, dai ichi
1931
Color woodblock print; oban
January 1938
Woodblock print, ink and color on paper
1938
Color woodblock print; oban
10/70, 1966
Woodblock print
Curated cross-cuts that include this print.
Moss Garden was created by Fumio Kitaoka (北岡文雄).
Moss Garden depicts gardens.
